Climate Change Effect: Record drought returned lost town in Colorado as Lake Mead dries up

In 1938, almost 80years ago, St. Thomas an Old West town in United States was overran and lost to the incursion and flooding of the plain by Lake Mead in Colorado, near the Grand Canyon.

The sail of the tide was however reversed this year, no thanks to the scorching summer heat that hit some part of United States. Presently, the lake is almost dried up revealing the entire town that vanished almost ten decades ago.

The emerging ruins

 Expectedly, the gift of this year’s drought which has been said to be the longest in recent times has created a new tourists destination as it continues to draw people from other parts of the United Sates and the rest of the world.  At the site, tourists have the privileged of seeing the stone ruins and walk across parts of the lake bed, which has lost 60 per cent of its contents to this year’s drought.

Lake Mead was a botched attempt by the American government in the early twentieth century to create a reservoir and built a dam to create a lake, the largest in America.

 

The drying dam/lake Mead

Then in 1938, in the face of rising water levels, American Government called for evacuation but many residents of the historic town refused to leave until the very last minute when the surging flood completely submerged their homes and valuables. 

Since 1938, water levels in the area have continued to rise, reaching their highest in the 1970s and in the early years of 1980s but the recent drought spells had rewritten the history and almost completely reversed the sacking of the Old Western town of St. Thomas. 

Gentry Hotel before it was overran a few decades later

Residents of St. Thomas assessing the floods before they were sacked from the town

This bridge was completely submerged by  Lake Mead

Early days of the dam's project